Immune disorders are characterized by the inappropriate activation of the body's immune defenses. Rather than targeting infectious invaders, the immune response targets and damages the body's own tissues or transplanted tissues. The tissue targeted by the immune system varies with the disorder. For example, in multiple sclerosis, the immune response is directed against the neuronal tissue, while in Crohn's disease the digestive tract is targeted.
Immune disorders affect millions of individuals and include conditions such as asthma, allergic intraocular inflammatory diseases, arthritis, atopic dermatitis, atopic eczema, diabetes, hemolytic anaemia, inflammatory dermatoses, inflammatory bowel or gastrointestinal disorders (e.g., Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, pruritis/inflammation, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, cirrhosis, and systemic lupus erythematosus.
Current treatment regimens for immune disorders typically rely on immunosuppressive agents. The effectiveness of these agents can vary and their use is often accompanied by adverse side effects. Thus, improved therapeutic agents and methods for the treatment of autoimmune disorders are needed.
Additionally, the increased number of cancer cases reported in the United States, and, indeed, around the world, is a major concern. Currently there are only a handful of detection and treatment methods available for some specific types of cancer, and these provide no absolute guarantee of success. In order to be most effective, these treatments require not only an early detection of the malignancy, but a reliable assessment of the severity of the malignancy.
It is apparent that the complex process of tumor development and growth must involve multiple gene products. It is therefore important to define the role of specific genes involved in tumor development and growth and identify those genes and gene products that can serve as targets for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancers.
We and others have shown that Pin1 is prevalently overexpressed in human cancers and that high Pin1 marker levels correlate with poor clinical outcome in many cancers. In contrast, the Pin1 polymorphism that reduces Pin1 expression is associated with reduced cancer risk in humans. Significantly, Pin1 activates at least 19 oncogenes/growth enhancers, including β-catenin, cyclin D1, NF-κB, c-Jun, c-fos, AKT, A1B1, HER2/Neu, MCl-1, Notch, Raf-1, Stat3, c-Myb, Hbx, Tax, and v-rel, and also inactivates at least 12 tumor suppressors/growth inhibitors, including PML, SMRT, FOXOs, RARα, and Smad. Whereas Pin1 overexpression causes cell transformation and tumorigenesis, Pin1 knockdown inhibits cancer cell growth in cell cultures and mice. Pin1-null mice are highly resistant to tumorigenesis induced either by oncogenes such as activated Ras or HER2/Neu, or tumor suppressors such as p53. Thus, there is a need in the art for Pin1 inhibitors to suppress numerous oncogenic pathways simultaneously for treating aggressive and/or drug-resistant cancers.